Should we use Fedora? Mike Haft & Kearon McNicol 20/01/2009
Jan 03, 2016
Should we use Fedora?
Mike Haft & Kearon McNicol
20/01/2009
What is the FBA?
• Renowned scientific association
• Establish 1929• Support science and
interest community• Works closely with
academics and government agency
Our mission is “to advance freshwater science and
encourage as many people as possible to adopt it as the
best way to understand, protect and manage our
precious water resources”.
About the FBA’s info resources
• The FBA has a variety of information resources built up over its 80 year history, these include :– The FBA Library, the world’s most comprehensive
freshwater library– The FBA unpublished collection, a wealth of
archived scientific material ranging from notebooks to specimen samples
– Large historical datasets collected over many years that of importance to long-term studies (i.e. climate change)
– An image archive– Online resources in the current FreshwaterLife
portal
Current systems
• Library catalogue – CDS ISIS• Unpublished collection catalogue – Access
database• Data – spreadsheets, notebooks, etc.• Images – Gallery and boxes• FreshwaterLife portal ‘repository’ – UN Food and
Agriculture Organisation software• And more…
• Experience in terminologies, thesauri, ontologies, etc.
What is FreshwaterLife?
• A collaboration between specialists, enthusiasts and organisations with a freshwater interest
Purpose: To promote easy access to the world’s information on freshwater organisms and their habitats
• Aims:1. To support the information needs of those with an interest
in freshwater biology.2. To encourage communication and information sharing
throughout the freshwater interest community.3. To promote an appreciation and understanding of
freshwater ecosystems.
What is FreshwaterLife?
• It is built on the input of partners and individual experts around the world– 40+ editors– 900+ registered users
• FwL has been going since 2000 and has been run thus far on software provided by the FAO. We want to change this.
Example Portlet Page Page properties(used to retrieve appropriate content and styling)- Template: Species summary- Style: Pond conservation- User level: Million ponds- Taxon: Triops cancriformis- GeoRegion: UK
Enhanced Catalogue, Search and Retrieval(uses ontologies, dictionaries, etc.)
Species nameTaxonomy, Synonyms, Common names
FwL Names Repository
NHM Species
Dictionary
uBio
Catalogue of Life
FwL Image Archive
Wildscreen ARKive
Images
Hand-written text: Million ponds intro
Hand-written text: UK distribution
Other hand-written texts as selected in the template
Texts extracted from other websites
Encyclopaedia of Life ?
Wikipedia?
FwL Data registry
Predefined queries
FwL Prototype
Alterra / Tachet
Biosys
NPS
ECDIN
Others ...
Fw
L e
nh
ance
d d
ata
inte
rro
gat
ion
sys
tem
(use
s on
tolo
gies
)FwL
Bibliography
FBA librarycatalogue
BritishLibrary
IAMSLICFwL Texts Repository
- Subject: species distribution- Taxon: Triops cancriformis
- Subject: species intro- User: Million ponds- Taxon: Triops cancriformis
FBA-FwL ePrint / eLibrary
Selection of relevant refernces, websites, etc.
Data summaries – e.g. pH range, etc.
Selection of relevant datasets
Could probably use Fedora Commons
Could probably use ComparaGrid
New development of the FwL Portal
• Use of the Liferay Portal software enables:– Individual components such as species life
history; images; data– User can create pages according to their own
needs by adding components as they wish– Ability to have default views and views
tailored to specific user groups and organizations.
Using the new portal
• The JSR 286 standard and various technologies (i.e. JSF & ICEfaces) allow inter portlet communication in the Liferay portal
• This means that if navigating through a species taxonomy, the navigation portlet can pass info on what species is being browsed to other portlets which can fetch and display the relevant information, i.e. :– images portlet – life-history portlet – library catalogue portlet
Using the new portal
• The individual portlets will have to know where to look for the relevant information and:
• How to display it (i.e. what format).• The information sources they will need are
widely dispersed in various FBA catalogues and databases in a variety of formats (i.e. MySQL, MS Access, Endnote etc)
• The portal will have to be able to edit not just read information sources (subject to appropriate permissions)
Is Fedora a solution?
• How would we achieve this using Fedora?• Can we use our existing biology domain
ontologies to categorize and retrieve objects/information from Fedora?
• Are automated updates and maintenance of imported information possible?
• Is seamless workflow controlled editing of Fedora objects possible from the portal?